New Oysters Haven Pumps Up The Woodlands’ Seafood Restaurant Power — Your First Taste Look at Good Charlie’s

Tired of having to make a three-hour round trip drive to San Leon to get good oysters, local restauranteur Jim Hallers and partner Charlie Inman have opened Good Charlie’s Oyster Bar and Seafood in The Woodlands. Good Charlie’s is built around Hallers’ belief that when you give people good food for a reasonable price, they will come back.

Initially hooked on oysters after eating in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Hallers sought them out in Houston. And closer to The Woodlands. With little luck.

“I would drive all the way to San Leon, which is South of Kemah,” Hallers says. “I would drive to Pier 6 to get chargrilled oysters. It’s an hour and a half.”

Now Good Charlie’s brings outstanding oysters straight to The Woodlands area.

There’s more to this new Woodlands restaurants than oysters, though. Seafood from executive chef Ricardo Clough is on the menu too. Clough worked at Truluck’s as a sous chef and brings some serious seafood experience to Good Charlie’s. You’ll find shrimp, crab and fish dishes on the menu.

The char-grilled oysters are the star of the show at Good Charlie’s, but the coconut shrimp is a popular choice too, coming with a mango habanero dipping sauce.

The inside of Good Charlie’s Oyster Bar, which seats about 200, features a bar surrounded with a backlit blue agate stone that almost resembles oyster shells. Booths, regular tables and tall tables bring plenty of seating options. And when the weather cooperates (and Texas finally cools down), a patio that seats 70 figures to become a popular retreat. Its neatly buffered from 1488 with an Instagram-worthy wall.

There are lots of Happy Hour specials on the Good Charlie’s menu — oysters included. Mondays through Fridays from 2 pm to 5  pm, oysters are $6 off a dozen, or $3 off half a dozen. Drink specials are available too.

A private room for 40, with AV capabilities, is a bright and cheery space off the main dining room. A smaller, semi-private area is also available for groups of less than 20 people.

Good Charlie’s Oyster Haven

Good Charlie’s is built around a love for oysters. And the joys of eating them year round. As for that old wives’ tale about not eating raw Gulf oysters in the summer? That’s no longer tue thanks to a process used by Hallers’ supplier Prestige Oyster.

“They do high pressure pasteurization of oysters,” Hallers tells PaperCity The Woodlands. “What happens is is literally they have a machine about the size of a semi truck down in their basement. Oysters going in and they’ve been put under intense water pressure.

“It’s like sending them to the bottom of the ocean. And the pressure kills all the bacteria. So then your oyster has a shelf life of two weeks that makes all the difference.”

Oysters from the Northeast are on Good Charlie’s menu too.

“We actually get them twice a week,” Hallers notes. “We buy them in the sacks of hundreds, straight from the farmers. So we look to see what looks interesting. And we say ‘Let’s try this one.’ It might sell out in a day and then we go to the next one. And we’re buying them 300 to 400 at a time because we do two deliveries a week.

And we just picked a couple interesting ones. We always have something interesting.”

Good Charlie’s can be found at 545 Woodland Square Boulevard, just off 1488 at Old Conroe Road. This new Woodlands restaurant is open Sundays through Thursdays from 11 am to 9 pm and Fridays and  Saturdays from 11 am to 10 pm.